The specification relates to providing content to users. In particular, the specification relates to processing content spoilers.
Over the last decade, social networking has become increasingly popular. People frequently share information (e.g., videos, posts, comments, photos, movie reviews, book reviews, etc.) with other users in a social network. However, the information shared by a user may include spoilers for other users. For example, if a user publishes a post describing the unexpected ending of a movie in the user's social stream, this post may spoil the movie's surprise to other users who have not viewed the movie yet. On the other hand, if a user knows that another user can provide the spoiling information, the user can explicitly ask the other user for the spoilers. For example, assume a user has read the first two chapters of a book and may be very anxious to know what happens at the end of the story. If the user learns that a friend has finished reading the book, the user may ask the friend privately to provide information about the end of the story without spoiling the surprise for other users in a group.